Romeo and JulietBy William

Shakespeare

An introduction to

References to Romeo and Juliet are everywhere…including current fashion

magazines.

"Love of a Lifetime" has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the December 2008 issue of Vogue.

Romeo: O she doth teach the torches to burn bright!/It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night/As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—/Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. (Act I, Sc. 5)

The Fateful Night

Nurse: His name is Romeo, and a Montague,/The only son of your great enemy. Juliet: My only love sprung from my only hate!/Too early seen unknown, and known too late!/Prodigious birth of love it is to me,/That I must love a loathed enemy. (Act I, Sc. 5)

Juliet: Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed./If that thy bent of love be honourable,/Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow. (Act II, Sc. 2)

Friar Laurence: These violent delights have violent ends,/And in their triumph die like fire and powder,/Which as they kiss consume. (Act II, Sc. 6)

Romeo: This day's black fate on moe days doth depend,/This but begins the woe others must end. (Act III, Sc. 1)

Friar Laurence: Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary/On this fair corse, and as the custom is,/And in her best array, bear her to church;/For though fond nature bids us all lament,/Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment. (Act IV, Sc. 5)

Prince: A glooming peace this morning with it brings,/The sun for sorrow will not show his head./Go hence to have more talk of these sad things;/Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:/For never was there a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. (Act V, Sc. 3)

What do we need to know to help us understand and appreciate

Romeo and Juliet?

Romeo and Juliet is actually a tragedy.

What is a TRAGEDY?

Literarily speaking a tragedy is…

a work of literature, especially a play that results in a catastrophe for the main character. In ancient Greek drama, the main character was always a significant person –a king or a hero- and the cause

of the tragedy was a tragic flaw, or weakness, in his or her character.

Shakespeare utilized the tradition of the chorus in many of his plays including Romeo and Juliet.

What is a chorus?

Not that kind of chorus

Again literarily speaking…

a chorus is the use of a figure or group of figures who comment on a play’s action (this idea goes back to ancient Greek and Roman drama). In Shakespeare’s time, it was common for a chorus to deliver a prologue –an opening speech that introduces the play’s main characters, plot, and setting.

Entertainme

nt Today

Entertainment in Elizabethan England

Basically anything you are in the mood for.comedyromanceactionhorrorWhat choices

do you have?

Think about going to the

movies…

Elizabethan audiences didn’t have this luxury.

What did Shakespeare have to do in order to appease his entire audience?

First let us consider Shakespeare’s audience and the social classes of Elizabethan England.

In Shakespeare's time there are only about 55 noble families in England.  At the head of each noble family is a duke, a baron, or an earl.  These are the lords and ladies of the land. These men are rich and powerful, and they have large households. For example, in 1521 the earl of Northumberland supports 166 people – family, servants and guests.  A person became a member of the nobility in one of two ways: by birth, or by a grant from the queen or king. Noble titles were hereditary, passingfrom father to oldest son. People in other classes might lose status by wasting their fortunes and becoming poorer.  It took a crime such as treason for a nobleman to lose his title.  

When Elizabeth I was young, only about 5% of the population would have been classed as gentry: knights, squires, gentlemen, and gentlewomen "who did not work with their hands for a living." (Time Traveller's Guide) Their numbers, though, were growing.  They were the most important social class in Shakespeare's England.

"Wealth was the key to becoming part of the gentry. These were people not of noble birth who, by acquiring large amounts of property, became wealthy landowners. Some families bought property bit by bit over generations. A man might marry the daughter of a lesser knight or noble and gain land through his wife's inheritance. Some of the great merchants made their fortunes in the city, then bought a country estate.

"Between the two extremes of rich and poor are the so-called 'middling sort', who have saved enough to be comfortable but who could at any moment, through illness or bad luck, be plunged into poverty. They are yeomen farmers, tradesmen and craft workers. They have apprentices and take religion very seriously; usually, they are literate." (Time Traveller's Guide)

At the bottom were the poor.  There was far more poverty under Elizabeth than in previous reigns, mostly because of enclosure, but there were also the sick, the disabled, the old and feeble, and soldiers unable to work because of wounds.  In earlier times, the church -- notably the monasteries -- had cared for the poor. Under Elizabeth, the government undertook the job -- a big job because enclosure had created so much unemployment.

The result was the famous Elizabethan Poor Laws, one of the world's first government- sponsored welfare programs.  The program was financed, at first, by contributions from the wealthy.  When this proved inadequate, a poor tax was levied on everyone.  The Poor Laws had three goals: first, those unable to care for themselves were placed in hospitals or orphanages.  Children, when they were old enough, were put out as apprentices to craftsmen. Second, the able-bodied who could not find jobs on their own were put to work, usually in workhouses established in the towns.  These were places where the unemployed were put to work making goods for sale -- such small items as candles, soap, or rope -- in exchange for a place to sleep and enough food to keep alive.

The third goal was to discourage the permanently unemployed, "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars" responsible for "horrible murders, thefts, and other great outrages."48  The Elizabethans made a clear distinction between those who, for one reason or another, were unable to work and those able-bodied people who refused employment, whether in a regular job or in a workhouse.  The Elizabethan sense of order revolted at

the thought of people wandering about with no respectable occupation.  To refuse to work for wages was an offense punishable by law.  When vagrants were caught, they were whipped and returned to the parishes (church areas) of their birth. If the vagrant refused work or escaped from a workhouse and was caught, he was "burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about."50  If, for a third time, a vagrant was found to be unemployed, the punishment was death.

Social Class of the cast of characters: Like all of Shakespeare’s dramas, Romeo and Juliet features characters from all social classes and all walks of life. The diversity of characters on the stage reflects the diversity found within the original audiences at the performances of the plays.